SERVICES

Nottingham City Council chooses Sophos NAC

IT administrators at Nottingham City Council can enforce policies
over unsecured computers with Sophos NAC.

IT security and control firm Sophos today announced that it has
signed a deal worth £250,000 to supply Nottingham City Council with
its Network Access Control (NAC), Endpoint and
Email
Security and Control solutions.

The deployment will be rolled out across the council's entire
network infrastructure and will protect more than 7,000 desktops
against threats, such as malware and spam, as well as enabling the
council to set and control access policies for employees and
guests. By consolidating on Sophos across the whole organization,
Nottingham City Council will benefit from integrated security
defenses, greater efficiency and faster response times, as well as
a single support contact.

Nottingham City Council is responsible for all local government
services within the British city of Nottingham. The council works
in partnership with many other organisations across the city, where
it receives numerous visitors to its various offices each day.
Currently, only desktops and laptops that are administered by
Nottingham City Council are allowed access to the internet and the
organization's network. Visitors' ability to work efficiently can
be hindered as many cannot even check email or gain internet
access.

To enable secure guest access to the network as well as mitigate
against hacker and malware attacks, Nottingham City Council will
install a NAC solution across its whole infrastructure. NAC can ensure that all
visitors wishing to connect their laptops to the network will be
granted appropriate access only if they meet the council's access
policy, such as having up-to-date anti-virus running, as well as
security patches and a firewall installed on their laptops. With
more than 1,000 pre-defined applications and operating system
patches, it is possible to check even those laptops that are
running different security solutions to the Council's own. The NAC
solution can also check and block guest computers that are running
unauthorised programs, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing
software, which could pose additional security risks to the
organization.

"Our network contains sensitive data about hundreds of thousands
of citizens, as well as confidential information about various
government projects, so security is absolutely critical," said Dan
Smith, principal network and security officer at Nottingham City
Council. "We therefore needed to find a balance between safety and
productivity - it is simply impractical not to allow any form of
guest access. With NAC, we believe we've found the ideal solution
as this will enable us to effectively control who and what is
logging on to the network, and what they're able to access. We
already have strong security arrangements in place and are looking
to strengthen these and ensure that the authority maintains a
manageable but resilient secure infrastructure."

Nottingham City Council has evaluated Sophos NAC Advanced and is
now rolling out the technology to a test site of 100 users. NAC
will gradually be deployed across the rest of the Council's network
infrastructure to coincide with user migration over to Microsoft
Active Directory. Sophos NAC Advanced includes extensive yet
simple-to-use reporting capabilities, which will enable Nottingham
City Council to easily define and enforce policies and user
profiles. For example, reports will show the most common reasons
that PCs are denied access to the network, as well as which groups,
and indeed individuals, have the most non-compliant computers.

"For organisations like Nottingham City Council with thousands
of employees and any number of visitors requiring access to the
network, defending the organisation against attack and ensuring
that data doesn't fall into the wrong hands can seem like a
nightmare," said Andrew Bradshaw, vice president of Sophos UK. "A
reputable NAC solution's job is two-fold: to guarantee that any
visitor or employee computer accessing the network meets the
company's security policy and that all machines access approved
network areas only."

In addition to Sophos NAC Advanced, Nottingham City Council will
also deploy Sophos to defend all its desktops, laptops, file
servers and mobile devices, as well as protect against inbound and
outbound email-borne threats. Around 80 percent of Nottingham City
Council's offices have been using Sophos Anti-Virus for the last
five years, with the remaining 20 percent running solutions from
competitors including McAfee. The new deal will see Nottingham City
Council consolidate on Sophos across the entire organization.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos’ complete security solutions as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Simple to deploy, manage, and use, Sophos’ award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions are backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K., and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol “SOPH.” More information is available at www.sophos.com/company.